Greenbacks won't reform Red China
By Wayne Dunn
web posted February 25, 2002
Imagine if America's slavery abolitionists had employed the
following strategy: enthusiastically purchase goods made by
slaves so that the increased commerce might somehow convince
their masters to free them.
Fortunately for the slaves, that wasn't the abolitionists' policy.
But, curiously, it's the way the past several U.S. administrations
have expected to usher reform to the slave-state of China: by
trading with it.
Individual Chinese no more enjoy individual rights than slaves did
in pre-Civil-War America. All property and means of production
in China -- every life in China -- is ultimately controlled by the
state, just as surely as the lives and personal effects of the
African slaves were controlled and owned by their masters. To
paraphrase Ayn Rand, to pretend that a man acting at the point
of a gun is an entrepreneur exercising any "rights" is to lend moral
sanction to the gun-holders.
China is nation ruled by thugs. Its regime has murdered millions
more people than Hitler's. At this very moment millions of
Chinese languish in labor camps for no other "crime" than
opposing their government's policies. Believing that trading with
such a nation will prompt it to embrace freedom is about as
plausible as believing that buying a shirt from Tony Soprano
would prompt him to quit the Mafia.
There are some in the West, however, who are against trading
with China, but for the wrong reason: they hate capitalism. The
anti-capitalists oppose trade on principle, particularly trade
between the West and less-developed nations such as Malaysia
and Thailand, because, they bemoan, workers there aren't paid
anywhere near what their Western counterparts are. The
difference that escapes the anti-trade crowd, of course, is that
goods made in China might very well be fashioned with slave
labor, whereas in nations like Thailand and Malaysia, people are
relatively free. ("Slave-wages," a term bandied about by
opponents of capitalism to describe what they regard as low
pay, is a contradiction. A man who freely agrees to work for a
certain wage is not a slave; if he's a slave, his agreement is not
required.)
Conversely, some friends of free trade rightly object to doing
business with tyrannical regimes, but their formulation is false:
they call businessmen who trade with China "selfish" or "greedy."
Selfish? Greedy? If a killer with an empty gun came to your door
and asked to buy the bullet he needed to shoot you, it isn't
"selfish" or "greedy" to sell it to him -- it's self-destructive.
Businessmen should realize that trading with China is, in the long
run, actually against their self-interest.
Why? Because China is openly opposed to individual rights, to
freedom, to property ownership, to every fundamental upon
which business and capitalism rests. How does bolstering a
government and system that would destroy you amount to an act
of self-interest?
No, one can't reform a hoodlum by providing him a veneer of
respectability. One can't beat him by making his crimes pay. One
can't convert him by pretending he's legitimate and expecting it'll
somehow rub off. One must stand up to a thug when he
becomes threatening and isolate him the rest of the time. One
must allow him to reap the effects of his own irrationality, not
shield him from them with a constant infusion of cash.
It's time businessmen became more selfish, more greedy, and
starting thinking long range. It's time capitalists closed their
accounts with Red China. Then when the communist regime falls
of its weight, as it inevitably will if not propped up with
greenbacks, then businesspeople can expect to reap abundant
profits from a huge market of people eager to try out their new
freedoms. And the former slaves will thank us for it.
Wayne Dunn is creator/editor of The Rational View, at
www.rationalview.com.
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